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Shorebirds are my thing. I love watching flocks of them wheel and turn in flocks of tens, hundreds, and even thousands at a time, so when I heard about the initiative of World Shorebirds Day, I immediately signed up for a few sites at one of my favourite shorebirding locations just outside the city. Leading up to it, there had been some great sightings of somewhat uncommon birds, and between July 29th and September 6th, I probably spent at least one day a week visiting it for at least a few minutes.

KilldeerWeed LakeJuly 29, 2014

Early on, the usual shorebirds that breed in and around Calgary were abundant and relatively easy to find. Killdeer, Wilson’s Phalarope, Willets, Black-necked Stilts, American Avocets and Spotted Sandpipers were everywhere, but as migration ramped up into mid-August, the shorebirding really began heating up. The first Black-bellied Plovers were seen in early August, and by August 10th, just about every species of shorebird we can expect to move through the Calgary area was there to be counted!

Lesser YellowlegsWeed LakeAugust 10, 2014

Semipalmated PloverWeed LakeAugust 10, 2014

So many shorebirds!Weed LakeAugust 10, 2014

Baird’s SandpipersWeed LakeAugust 10, 2014

A trio of Ruddy Turnstones showed up at the lake in late August, and on my scouting weekend they turned up and I had a chance to get relatively close looks at them. One of the more colorful shorebirds that we get around here, I think!

Ruddy TurnstonesWeed LakeAugust 30, 2014

Ruddy TurnstonesWeed LakeAugust 30, 2014

WilletWeed LakeAugust 30, 2014

And if you ever need some sense of scale for some of these small but powerful fliers, my current phone is roughly the same size as a Semipalmated Sandpiper. I’m not quite sure what caused the demise of this little fellow, but in the wild there are so many more things to be worried about than just predators. Disease, untreated injuries, or even simple medical anomalies can bring natural selection into play.

Unfortunate Semipalmated SandpiperWeed LakeAugust 30, 2014

And finally, after months of anticipation, the magical day arrived. Sadly the big numbers of shorebirds were nowhere to be found, though I did still get some good finds on the day!

Oh yeah, and I mentioned predators before, didn’t I? A pair of beautiful Peregrine Falcons were doing a great job of scattering the shorebirds that had stuck around. One of them even managed to snag a distant Lesser Yellowlegs while we watched on, and its mate gave us some good fly-bys as well!

One of the world’s greatest migrations is happening now. Billions of migratory birds are heading from the U.S., Central and South America to what’s been dubbed “North America’s bird nursery” —the sprawling billion-plus-acre boreal forest that spans the continent from Alaska across Canada to Newfoundland and Labrador—to nest and produce next year’s generation of birds.

However, as abundant as they are, boreal birds face myriad challenges and threats to their habitat. Some of the most iconic species have suffered dramatic declines in recent decades.

Boreal Chickadee. Photo by Dan Arndt

A new science report – Boreal Birds Need Half: Maintaining North America’s Bird Nursery and Why it Matters – released May 5 , recommends protecting at least 50 percent of the boreal forest from industrial development. That level of conservation is vital to provide birds the best chance of maintaining healthy populations for hundreds of species of birds that rely on the boreal forest for nesting and migratory stopover..

The report, produced by Ducks Unlimited and the Boreal Songbird Initiative, offers scientific support for expansive, landscape-scale habitat conservation in large, interconnected protected areas that are necessary to help ensure the diversity of species . It also showcases significant areas across Canada where birds, landscapes and biodiversity are extraordinarily special.

The report also reveals often unappreciated roles boreal birds play in providing ecosystem services—pollinating plants, redistributing nutrients, and controlling pests, for example—and the value they add (more than $100 billion to economies in the U.S. and Canada). It also emphasizes the integral role birds play in the culture of Aboriginal Peoples throughout the boreal.

The Rusty Blackbird used to be a common sight in Alberta, ranging from the prairies to the boreal forest, and often a nice splash of color in a mixed flock of migrating blackbirds both in spring and fall. Over the past 50 years, their population has declined between 85 and as much as 99% by some estimates, and is a particularly vulnerable species at risk, not only in Alberta, but all over North America. It is with great pleasure that I note that eBird.org has organized yet another citizen science project in order to better understand the ecology, migration hotspots, and to develop some strategies to better accommodate this highly vulnerable species.

The Rusty Blackbird Spring Migration Blitz opened March 1, 2014 all over North America, and the usual target dates for spotting them in our area are between April 1 and mid-May. The goal is to get as many birders to go out, as they usually would anyway, and report the observations to eBird under the Rusty Blackbird Spring Migration Blitz survey type.

In all the commotion of the flood, the heartache, and the hard times many of us, our loved ones, and our friends are going through, sometimes you just need to get away for a little while. On Thursday night, my neighborhood was evacuated, and having expected the news earlier in the day, I packed up the jeep and convinced the better half that it would be a good idea to go camping for the weekend, until we could safely return home, so we packed up the only valuables in our basement (our camping supplies) and headed out.

Our destination was unknown initially, and we just wanted to get away from the swelling rivers and get a good night’s rest, but we found ourselves in Brooks, and headed down to the campground at Kinbrook Island Provincial Park.

Situated on Lake Newell, the campground is home to a number of grassland species that you’d be hard pressed to find here in Calgary, and many others that are here, but maybe a bit harder to track down. Located about an hour and a half south-east of Calgary on the Trans-Canada Highway, it is close enough that you can safely complete a full day trip there and back with plenty of birding time within the park grounds, but the camping is phenomenal, especially in early summer with all of the summer species singing their hearts out.

Tree Swallow hunting over the lake

Western Kingbird looking quite regal

Baltimore Oriole catching some grub

Mourning Dove skulking about

Brown Thrasher, lead vocals of the Dawn Chorus

Ring-billed Gull portrait

Red-winged Blackbird

female Canvasback and young

Baltimore Oriole

I’m very unused to seeing Brewer’s Blackbirds in trees. Around Calgary they’re most commonly seen on gravel roads near sloughs!

Vesper Sparrow

This male Northern Harrier was one of two Harriers I saw over the weekend. It was also the only species of raptor I saw on the campground over all three days.

The irate chatter of the Marsh Wren was by far the most vocal bird I heard on the entire Nature Walk loop on Sunday morning.

This Eastern Kingbird decided to come investigate what I was doing sitting down by the lake shore.

Now that I’m safely back in my unflooded home, my thoughts are turning more to the cleanup of our city, our parks, and hopes that all our readers made it through the worst of it unscathed.

A whooping crane egg has hatched at the Calgary Zoo’s Devonian Wildlife Conservation Centre near Dewinton. Although every year fertile eggs are sent to recovery partners in the U.S., this is the first chick to hatch at the zoo’s breeding facility in the last three years.

This chick hatched from a total of six fertile eggs that the whooping cranes laid this year at the Centre. Five eggs will be sent to other facilities in North America to continue to supplement wild whooping crane populations. There are seven breeding pairs of whooping cranes at the Centre and one non-breeding pair on display at the zoo.

As the chick matures, the zoo’s animal care team will determine if it will be part of the ongoing whooping crane breeding program at the Centre or if it will be relocated to be a part of other breeding programs.

Whooping cranes are currently listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List and are one of three bird species in Canada in that category. Through the efforts of the Devonian Wildlife Conservation Centre, the Calgary Zoo is helping to ensure the long term survival of the species through participating in the conservation breeding program and species reintroduction efforts.

This Wednesday, April 3, Brian Elder, Phil Cram and Mike Mulligan will talk about their experiences doing a bird and mammal Big Year in Canada in 2012. Along with Ray Woods, they were successful in finding over 500 species. You can read about their experiences on their blog,Fur & Feathers 500. Better yet, come out to the Bird Studies Group meeting and hear all about it.

The meeting will take place in room 211 of the Biological Sciences Building at the U of C. Doors open at 7 pm, and the meeting begins at 7:30.

I’m sure many of you have followed the Fur & Feathers 500 blog. Four Calgary bird watchers (and mammal watchers) did a bird and mammal Big Year in 2012, trying to see as many species as they could within Canada. They were successful in reaching their goals of seeing 500 combined species as a team, and of visiting each Territory and Province in Canada.

Brian Elder has summarized their efforts in two excellent posts, which highlight some of the most interesting species they saw, and which feature their great photographs too.

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Bird Photographs

Would you like to share your photos of birds from the Calgary area? Just email them to us at birdscalgary@gmail.com and we may put them up on the blog!
Please follow ethical birding and photography practices. See our Birding Ethics Page above.

Bird Identification

Sightings & Rare Birds

Bird sightings, especially rare or reportable birds, should be posted to the Listserv Albertabird. It's an excellent place to read about recent sightings, share your lists and report rare birds. You can read the messages without joining, but if you want to post your sightings you'll have to join the group Albertabird.

Rare or notable birds should also be reported to James Fox at fox.james.ed[at]gmail.com, 780.999.0642. See this post for guidelines.